


Precepts

by Kabocha (sparklestuff)



Category: Galebound (Webcomic)
Genre: Body Horror, Death, Gen, The Obligation is Awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21876400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklestuff/pseuds/Kabocha





	Precepts

Marin had been writing. Always, always, always writing. Marin wrote from the dark hour until waking-time, and often fell asleep at his desk. Today was no different.

Ambrose wondered if this was what Noblemen did with their time?

This time, Marin had been writing a story to send to someone. It’d been about High Prince Medicea’s invasion, and fires and daemons devouring a water-borne Magician.

It sounded so much like a fable.

Ambrose remembered it all so clearly; the heat, the screams, the way their aura crackled when the flame claimed their heart. It burned and hurt and devoured everything that Ambrose had been and would ever become. But fires never paid those sorts of things any mind. And that fire was now as much a part of them as their own soul.

The pain they felt at the start of Medicea’s campaign? That pain had been inflicted on the residents of the tiny town of Himalia.

A part of Ambrose had resisted - but the rest? They, at some point, had become happy to incinerate the town, as they’d been commanded. They’d asked other people gleefully if they sought to become one with them, as their white-hot aura swirled around and expanded into the buildings that stood nearby.

And then the Magician had appeared. She had been just a child, and had extinguished most of the town’s fire with only a word from Marin -- but child Magicians burned the same as any other human.

Before they could do the same to the Nobleman in front of them, they’d been commanded to stop. The pain the Obligation brought… It was like the heart that the flame devoured was being torn to shreds. Like heartbreak and a splitting migraine - as if Ambrose was to be torn asunder from the inside out.

And then, the Obligation to incinerate had been sliced cleanly away. The conflict stopped.

Medicea was dead from a knife in the belly, and his soul would soon be devoured by the very flames that had consumed Ambro--

“--Put out the fire.”

Ambrose hadn’t noticed that the paper they were holding had ignited. Or that Marin was awake, for that matter. They complied with the command hastily, smacking the paper against the desk in order to extinguish the flame.

Before Ambrose could say anything further - Marin had gone back to writing.

* * *

Ambrose simmered as Marin wrote more and more.

Today’s missives were to a church. Something about breaking a fever that didn’t seem to ever go down, as well as a proposal. It had been something ridiculous, about a Nobleman’s virtue.

Marin had taken Ambrose to an oceanside cottage - where the air was salty and sweet and cool all at the same time.

“We remember this place,” Ambrose had said upon arrival. “It was our favorite when we were Liorna.”

“...You would do well to enjoy the sea air, then,” Marin had muttered, after a moment of carefully considering his words. “I hear it’s good for one’s health.”

“We know.”

Steam rose from where Ambrose walked along the waves. The brine of the water stung the spots where the fever had caused their skin to redden and peel, washing bits away each time the water receded.

In the days after Himalia’s decimation, Marin had tried his hardest to undo whatever order Prince Medicea had forced Ambrose to comply with. Marin had Ambrose try everything from complicated enchantments, to attempting to rest, to dousing themselves with water -- but none of it had worked.

Ambrose had been curious as to why Marin cared so much. Marin had been from another land - and was the spare of a spare… How _ had _ they come to know this?

Had they had been friends with the Nobleman? Trying to remember how _ Ambrose _ felt was like trying to read a charred paper - but Liorna…

Marin had been _ her _ friend, and she’d died as she tried to stop her fath--

The thought was interrupted by a sudden wave of cold water across Ambrose’s feet. “You know this hurts us,” they said to the sea in response.

* * *

Ambrose felt so tired and hot and uncomfortable.

Their entire body radiated heat. They’d had a particular place along the beach that they’d laid in to cool off during the dark hour - where the sand had started to turn smooth and glassy.

But today, Marin had stopped writing.

He instead sat by their side on the beach with a potted verbena, and talked about his visits to Medicea. How he had become friends with a Magician whose daughter had been taken to Himalia, and sold to the country’s ruling family. How attempts were made to peacefully bring the child home - but as Himalia refused, Medicea had decided to take grave offense.

How there was so much good in the world, even if the Obligation had turned rotten.

Ambrose smiled, but didn’t understand. Their thoughts were fleeting and wispy like smoke, but they listened anyway.

He told Ambrose that he’d intended to change this. He’d recently gotten a response from the Church in Vespas. They’d accepted his precepts and his thesis, and invited him to study with them. They’d needed bright young minds like his, to help reinvigorate the world and guide the Nobility into an era of prosperity.

“Would you like to hear them?”

Ambrose nodded. “We are curious, Lord Mallovin.”

As Marin spoke, Ambrose felt the heat envelop their body, freeing them from what had become a torturous cage.


End file.
